What is ecotourism? To most people, it’s a confusing and only vaguely familiar term. Some ask “Does ecotourism mean staying in ecolodges?” Yes, it does, but that’s not all. Ecotourism is an approach to travel that embraces all the principles of responsible tourism, not just choice of accommodation. Still, if you’re new to eco-travel, ecolodges are a great place to start.

Visiting a rainforest is a unique nature experience. During the day, these unique biomes burst with a busy buzz and bright flashes of colour, while at night, the air comes alive with the shrieks and calls of the forest’s many nocturnal creatures. Amidst all this natural beauty, it’s important to tread lightly. Rainforests are home to an estimated 40 to 75 percent of all the world’s plants and animals, including many still just being discovered.

Today, Tayrona proudly displays its true nature as a safe environment for tourists. Since its elevation in status to a national park in 1969, this biodiversity area covering 12,000 hectares of land and 3,000 of sea has been growing in popularity. Within its territory are sandy beaches, dazzling blue/azure ocean waters, tropical dry jungle and a rainforest up to 900 metres in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

If you want to see great apes in the wild, Sumatra’s rainforest is one of the most accessible places to do just that. Seeing orangutans in the wild, along with silver Thomas leaf monkeys, pig-tailed macaques, and a diverse range of birds like hornbills, will leave you with a renewed appreciation for the beauty and ingenuity of other species.

Maliau Basin is one of the world’s finest remaining wilderness areas. It encompasses over 390 square kilometres of pristine rainforest in the south-central part of Sabah, Borneo, in Malaysia. The rainforest is so dense that less than 50 percent of it has ever been explored. Today, the Maliau is awaiting UNESCO World Heritage Site status.

“Load up quick, bad weather, come very quick!” These are the last words you ever want to hear when you are a passenger in a tiny 20-seater plane flying into the rainforest. As the engines whirred into life, I wondered for a split second whether or not I’d bought enough supplies to last a trek to the nearest village should the plane crash. Risky or not, the flight into the interior of Sarawak only served to highlight the nature of the trip that was to come – remote and, at this point, reckless.

No fewer than 1.6 billion people — nearly a quarter of the world’s population — depend on forests for their livelihoods. Forests are also critical to maintaining biodiversity, mitigating climate change and enabling key ecosystem functions that regulate the biosphere. And yet about 45 per cent of the world’s forests have already been cleared. Here are some hard numbers to ponder that tell us how and why we should stop.

In honour of Earth Day, staff at WHL Group took a moment to think about our planet. Today, we can travel the world in a way that we never could before — virtually, online. Although there is no replacement for seeing the wonders of nature live and in person, digital media such as online video delivers powerful and inspiring messages. Here are our top picks of videos of ‘earth moments’ that move us.